On August 31, 1939, Wojciech Najsarek went back to his post.

His post was a small railway station called Gdańsk-Westerplatte, in the harbor of the Free City of Danzig. The track ran from here through a wall, and behind the wall was Poland's military transit depot. Najsarek was thirty-nine, the stationmaster for the Polish State Railways and a senior sergeant in the reserve. He had fixed up a small room for himself in the station building.

Early the next morning a German warship across the harbor opened fire. When the guns stopped, a German naval assault company came forward. Najsarek ran out of the station in uniform, pistol in hand.

A burst from a heavy machine gun knocked him down.

He was the first Polish defender to fall in those seven days. Whether he died on the spot or later in a hospital in the city, the accounts disagree. Where he is buried, no one knows to this day.

I. An Arsenal Behind a Wall

The peninsula had once been a seaside resort for Danzig. In 1924 the League of Nations assigned it to Poland for unloading, storing and shipping military materiel. On December 9, 1925, the League Council set the rule: no more than eighty-eight Polish soldiers on site, two officers, twenty NCOs and sixty-six men. No fortifications.

The Poles built them anyway. From the summer of 1933, under the pretext of better quarters for the garrison, five guardhouses and new barracks went up, finished in 1936. From outside they looked like houses or garages; in their basements were shelters and machine-gun rooms. Most of the work was done at night. The roofs were reinforced with rails taken up from disused sidings, so no material had to be brought in to draw attention.

German naval intelligence kept watching. On February 20, 1936, aircraft of the Danzig air sports association photographed the peninsula after a snowfall, the trees bare and every building plain to see; an intelligence officer circled the guardhouses and the new barracks in red crayon. An informant reported that the loopholes were plastered over in case Danzig officials came to inspect. A sighting report of August 21, 1939, noted heavy tree-felling on the peninsula and wire going up behind the wall along the river.

When it came time to attack, none of this material was used.

II. Twelve Hours

The garrison's task appears first in an account written in 1946 by Dąbrowski and Grodecki: hold out with the means at hand for six hours, until reinforcements arrived by sea from Gdynia. On the afternoon of August 31, the time was extended to twelve hours.

How many men were on the peninsula is still uncertain. At the last rotation, in the spring of 1939, civilian employees put on uniforms and rode the navy tug to Gdynia, then came back overland in their own clothes; the uniforms went back to the peninsula on new soldiers. Researchers put the total at around two hundred. There were six officers: the commandant, Major Henryk Sucharski; his deputy, Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski; the doctor, Captain Słaby; the guard platoon commander, Lieutenant Pająk; the adjutant, Lieutenant Grodecki; and Second Lieutenant Kręgielski, who had arrived only in early August.

On August 25 the old German battleship Schleswig-Holstein steamed into Danzig harbor, officially to honor German sailors of the First World War, and tied up at Neufahrwasser, across from Westerplatte. Her captain, Gustav Kleikamp, carried secret orders. A naval assault company had been quietly taken aboard at sea. The attack was set for the 26th, then called off.

The Germans knew almost nothing about what was on the peninsula. The ship planned with an old 1:1000 map supplied by a German harbor official. An observation sketch drawn aboard on August 26 identifies only two defensive works: the barracks and Guardhouse No. 2.

A sailor of the assault company, Heinrich Denker, remembered later that his officers knew as little as the men about how Westerplatte had been fortified; all they had was the outdated 1:1000 plan; everyone thought it would fall in a few hours and they would be back aboard for lunch.

III. Forty-Seven Minutes Past Four

Before dawn on September 1, the assault company was ashore and in position outside the wall at the southeastern end of the peninsula. At 4:47, Kleikamp gave the order to fire. A minute later the first rounds left the guns.

A few minutes after that, the naval command on the Hel peninsula received Sucharski's first message: "At 4:45 on September 1 the battleship Schleswig-Holstein began bombarding Westerplatte. The bombardment continues. Sucharski, major."

The shelling lasted only a few minutes; its purpose was to breach the wall. The company commander, Lieutenant Henningsen, fired two red flares to tell the ship to cease fire, and his men went in. By Denker's figures, by 4:55 the ship had fired eight 280 mm and fifty-nine 150 mm rounds.

That was the moment Najsarek fell.

The company ran into fire it could not see. The company's combat report, written that same day, contains the sentence: in both attacks the company did not sight a single enemy.

A second bombardment ran from 7:40 to 8:55. At 8:35 the company attacked again and kept at it until 12:30. Henningsen, at the front urging his men forward, was hit in the stomach and died of the wound. According to Denker, the company lost sixteen killed and about a hundred and twenty wounded on the first day.

On the Polish side three or four men were killed that day, the only field gun was knocked out, and the outer posts, among them "Ferry" and "Rampart," fell back to the line of guardhouses as planned.

IV. Guardhouse No. 5

Around six in the evening of September 2, some sixty dive bombers appeared overhead.

The bandmaster of the Schleswig-Holstein, Willi Aurich, wrote in his notes: we were standing on the upper deck; someone pointed at the sky; high up there were three, six, nine, twelve dots. The first one tipped over almost vertically and released its three "eggs," one larger and two smaller incendiary bombs. The explosions went on and on, and smoke filled the sky. "Everyone on board is utterly convinced that this must be the end of Westerplatte."

Guardhouse No. 5 collapsed entirely.

Two weeks later Luftwaffe technicians came to inspect the effect of their bombs. Their report says Guardhouse No. 5 took two 50 kg bombs, with a 250 kg bomb landing ten meters away; one bomb pierced the twenty-three-centimeter roof and "detonated with very good effect."

The guardhouse commander was Platoon Sergeant Adolf Petzelt, on the peninsula since September 1938. Buried in the rubble with him were Corporal Perucki, who had come with the last reinforcement on August 13; Corporal Gębura, who had come with the spring rotation in March; Okrasa, who was in charge of the garrison's food and carried hot meals out to the posts; and the commandant's orderly, Józef Kita.

Sucharski noted the day in a small pocket diary: "17:30 air attack until 18:15 (bombs up to 500 kg and incendiaries). Destruction of No. 5. Petzelt (killed), 6 (Kita). Destruction of the barracks. Burning of documents. Reorganization of the garrison. Restoring communications. At night, raids repulsed."

He put his own orderly's name in parentheses.

V. The Quarrel in the Barracks

The raid had cut the telephone lines between the posts. In the barracks no one knew how many guardhouses were still standing, and the men there prepared to fight off an attack from any side.

After the war Sucharski wrote in his report that immediately after the raid, because the situation seemed extremely critical, the ciphers, secret files and plans of the fortifications and defense were burned. "I admit that if the enemy had attacked within an hour after the raid, he would undoubtedly have succeeded."

Dąbrowski's memoir, published in 1957, says more. The major expressed doubts about the point of further resistance, plainly alluding to the twelve-hour task as already fulfilled. "I do not agree with the commandant. His wavering is settled in favor of continuing the fight by my report that the guardhouses are standing."

The adjutant, Grodecki, told the magazine Film in 1967 that Sucharski had not been calm then. "I was near him the whole time. I saw his wavering, his inner conflict, his agitation. Captain Dąbrowski and I more than once had to persuade him of the need to keep resisting." The major, he said, began talking of surrender after two days, believing they had done their duty by holding longer than command had planned. The interviewer noted that he had not decided to surrender then. Grodecki answered: "Thanks to the garrison. We wanted to fight."

The youngest officer, Kręgielski, left an account he himself thought unfit for publication; it was printed only in the early 1990s. He wrote that after the raid the major was "the first of the whole garrison to break down," that from then on he "ceased to exist as a commander," and that Dąbrowski took over the direction of the fight; the major wandered with a vacant stare, foam at his mouth, repeating "what will happen, what will happen." Kręgielski said he had this from Dąbrowski and Grodecki.

There is a harsher version still: a naval officer wrote that in the mid-1960s Grodecki told him the major suffered a severe shock and had to be strapped to his bed. That is a report of a report.

Sucharski died in 1946. He never had the chance to answer any of it.

VI. The Question of a White Flag

Beyond the quarrel there is a flag.

In 1993 the journalist Janusz Roszko wrote in Polityka that Dąbrowski had told him in 1958 that on September 2 the major ordered a white flag hung on the barracks. A book published in 1996 claimed that the doctor, Słaby, had said Dąbrowski saw the flag, flew into a rage, tore it down himself and took command; that is a third-hand story. In 2003 a researcher published statements by German veterans and a copy of a radio message supposedly sent from the ship at 7:50 that evening: at about 7:30 a white flag had been seen on Westerplatte from aboard. Some veterans of the assault company also told a Polish researcher late in life that the Poles had shown a white flag after the raid, and then opened fire again.

The Polish historian Jan Szkudliński went to the German military archive in Freiburg. The message is not in the ship's war diary or its annexes, nor in the war diary of Naval Group Command East. The ship's situation report, sent at nine that evening, says the raid made a strong impression but "does not seem to be a final success," because machine guns fired on our aircraft during the raid and right after it. Aurich's notes say nothing about a white flag on September 2; on September 7, when a white flag really did go up, he wrote it down on the spot.

Whatever Dąbrowski, Grodecki and Kręgielski wrote about the major, however harsh, none of them mentioned a white flag.

VII. We Will Burn Our Fingers

On the German side, the fear ran the other way.

On September 1, Berlin sent the services an urgent bulletin citing an agent: Westerplatte had at least twenty modern, very strong concrete bunkers connected underground, with surface cables run inside thick tree trunks. After the surrender the Germans questioned Polish prisoners about where the underground works were.

A five-page annex to the war diary of Army Group North, "Operation Westerplatte," states that the capture must be carried out calmly, "after thorough preparation." On September 3 Hitler halted the attack planned for the next day, and the document records the remark: "We'll burn our fingers!"

For the next few days the peninsula took shells. On September 4 a torpedo boat fired sixty-five rounds from the bay; its log reads: "No ammunition exploded. So the ammunition sheds were empty." On the night of September 5 and again on the afternoon of the 6th, the Germans pushed tank cars of flammable fuel onto the peninsula's track to burn the woods that blocked their view; both times the tanks blew up too soon, and the fire soon died down.

The defenders had no rest, little water and no hot food.

VIII. Guardhouse No. 2

Around 4:30 on the morning of September 7, the ship opened fire again. German infantry probed forward carefully and were stopped by fire from Guardhouses 1 and 2 and several outposts. The ship then turned its guns on Guardhouse No. 2.

That day the Schleswig-Holstein fired five 280 mm, 116 150 mm, 197 88 mm and 2,400 20 mm rounds. Guardhouse No. 2, already damaged by an army mortar round the day before, could no longer fight. No. 5 was long gone; Nos. 1 and 4 were damaged. The wounded were piling up; there was no water and no proper surgical instruments, and there was fear of gangrene.

At 10:15 a.m., Sucharski ordered an end to resistance. A white flag was hung in a window of the barracks.

Aurich, on the bridge, wrote: at 10:30, as I was watching Westerplatte through binoculars, someone on the signal bridge shouted, "Westerplatte has hoisted the white flag!" "General astonishment, but nobody really believes it; we even suspect some trick behind it."

The pioneer training battalion's report that day recorded the prisoners: five officers, one wounded; twenty-eight NCOs; 157 men including civilians, seven of them wounded. The ship's war diary gives five officers, twenty-seven NCOs and 158 men, with fifteen to twenty Polish dead.

The Germans let Sucharski go into captivity wearing his saber.

IX. Whose Victory

Once the fighting was over, the Germans began arguing among themselves.

On the day of the surrender, General Eberhardt, commanding the land forces, protested that the radio communiqué said nothing of the army's sacrifices, especially the pioneers'. A year later the army's pioneer inspectorate planned an exhibition in Danzig, and one officer welcomed the suggestion to make clear that Westerplatte had been overcome "solely" by the attack of a company of the 1st Pioneer Training Battalion; another complained that the true picture had been "somewhat muddled by the Navy." The battalion replied that it had nothing worth exhibiting: it had still been too dark during the fighting to take many photographs.

The Luftwaffe inspection report drew a different conclusion: under firm and brave leadership, even a weakly fortified position with nothing but the advantages of terrain and a small garrison can hold out against heavy artillery, bombs, machine guns and incendiaries.

During those seven days the Polish radio bulletins carried one line: "Westerplatte is still fighting."

Epilogue

The day after the surrender, Sergeant Kazimierz Rasiński, head of the radio station, was taken by the Germans for interrogation and never came back.

Sucharski survived the prisoner-of-war camps to the end of the war. He died in Italy on August 30, 1946, and was buried in a military cemetery there. In 1971 his remains were brought back to Westerplatte.

In the autumn of 2019 archaeologists dug up the remains of nine defenders on the peninsula. After DNA comparison, five men from Guardhouse No. 5, Petzelt, Perucki, Gębura, Okrasa and Kita, got their names back on September 1, 2020. On November 4, 2022, nine defenders were buried with their commandant in a new military cemetery on the peninsula.

The orderly whose name stood in parentheses in the pocket diary now lies in the same cemetery as his major.

Najsarek, from the station, is not among them. In the 1970s guides of the Polish tourist association set a boulder at the place where he spent his last moments.

Sources and editorial boundaries 1. Participants' records (quoted from the research articles below; originals not read): Sucharski's pocket-diary entry for September 2, 1939 (in F. Dąbrowski, Wspomnienia z obrony Westerplatte, Gdańsk 1957, p. 50); Sucharski's postwar report on operations at Westerplatte, September 1–7, 1939 (Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London, MAR A.II.6/1/1, p. 4; printed in London in 1957); F. Dąbrowski and S. Grodecki, Westerplatte. Z walk o Wybrzeże w 1939 roku (Gdynia 1946), p. 13 (six hours, then twelve); Dąbrowski's memoir (1957), p. 106; Grodecki's interview with Krystyna Grabień, Film 1967, no. 38, p. 7; Kręgielski's unpublished account, ed. W. Pater, Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny 1990, nos. 1–2, pp. 188–191 (Szkudliński's text dates the publication 1991); R. Witkowski's report of Grodecki's words, Rocznik Gdyński 1991, no. 10, pp. 74–75. All as quoted in Jan Szkudliński, "Spór w sprawie białej flagi nad Westerplatte," Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy 13 (64), 2012, no. 4, pp. 153–163, read in full: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/texts/przeglad-historyczno-wojskowy/2012-tom-13-64-numer-4-242/przeglad_historyczno_wojskowy-r2012-t13_64-n4_242-s153-163.pdf . Sucharski's first radio message follows the historical calendar of the Polish Navy Museum, Gdynia: https://muzeummw.pl/wybuch-wojny-westerplatte-puck-gdynia/ . 2. German records (quoted from the research article below; originals not read): Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, war diary of the Schleswig-Holstein (RM 92-5294) and annexes (No. 26, the assault company's report on September 1, "did not sight a single enemy"; No. 48, situation report of September 2, 21:00); war diary of Naval Group Command East (RM 35-I/19); Army Group North war diary annex "Unternehmen Westerplatte" (RH 19-II/3, ff. 149–153) and Eberhardt's protest of September 7 (RH 19 II/2, f. 36); the Berlin urgent bulletin of September 1 (RM 7/2978); naval intelligence reports on Westerplatte, 1936–1939 (RM 20/1967, RM 7/2978); war diary of torpedo boat T 196 (RM 94/258); the gunnery report of the ship's first artillery officer, Zaubzer (RM 92/5297, ammunition figures); the Pioneer Training Battalion's combat report of September 7 (RH 12-5/196, prisoners); the Luftwaffe Rechlin test station's inspection report of September 19, 1939 (RL 3/2379, bombs on Guardhouse No. 5 and conclusion); the Pioneer Inspectorate's 1940 exhibition file (RH 12-5/42); Denker's 1955 account (MSG 2/6228). All as quoted in Jan Szkudliński, "Wojskowa składnica tranzytowa na Westerplatte w świetle nowych niemieckich materiałów archiwalnych," Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy 16 (67), 2015, no. 3, pp. 141–159, read in full: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/texts/przeglad-historyczno-wojskowy/2015-tom-16-67-numer-3-253/przeglad_historyczno_wojskowy-r2015-t16_67-n3_253-s141-159.pdf . Aurich's notes follow M. Pelczar's edition (Relacja niemieckiego oficera o walce na Westerplatte, 1974, pp. 27–33) as quoted in the 2012 article. 3. German participants' recollections: Piotr Laskowski, "Kompania szturmowa Kriegsmarine w walkach na Westerplatte w 1939 r.," Przegląd Morski 2008, no. 9, pp. 55–63, read page by page from the scanned PDF: https://okretywojenne.pl/pefu/westbatterie/images/2008b/kompania_szturmowa.pdf . Denker on the old map and lunch aboard, the red flares, the shell counts to 4:55 and from 7:40, first-day losses, and German veterans' claims of a white flag on September 2 follow this article; much of its material comes from J. Żebrowski's conversations with veterans from the 1970s on. 4. Polish institutional sources: Gedanopedia (Encyclopedia of Gdańsk), entry "WESTERPLATTE" (B. Garba, M. Westphal et al.): https://gdansk.gedanopedia.pl/gdansk/?title=WESTERPLATTE (League decisions of 1924 and December 9, 1925, the 88-man limit, the secret guardhouses and barracks of 1933–1936, the spring rotation used to enlarge the garrison, the 4:47 order to fire, the fuel tank cars of September 5–6, the 4:30 bombardment of September 7 and the loss of Guardhouse No. 2, the flag in a barracks window, the wounded and fear of gangrene); Museum of the Second World War, Gdańsk, on Najsarek: https://www.muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/-historiawesterplatte-starszy-sierzant-rezerwy-wojciech-najsarek--zawiadowca-stacji-i-kolejarz-11665 ; list of the fallen: https://muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/-historiawesterplatte-polegli-na-westerplatte-11622 ; end of the fighting (10:15 order, the radio line, the saber): https://www.muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/-wojennydzien-zakonczenie-walk-na-westerplatte-11859 ; Polish Biographical Dictionary (iPSB), Najsarek: https://www.ipsb.nina.gov.pl/a/biografia/wojciech-najsarek-1900-1939-kolejarz-obronca-westerplatte ; Polish Navy Museum, August 25: https://muzeummw.pl/schleswig-holstein-wchodzi-do-gdanska/ ; Institute of National Remembrance, identification announcement of September 1, 2020: https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/dla-mediow/komunikaty/107960,Komunikat-Glownej-Komisji-Scigania-Zbrodni-przeciwko-Narodowi-Polskiemu-w-sprawi.html ; burial of November 4, 2022, with short biographies of the Guardhouse No. 5 men: https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/aktualnosci/173055,Uroczystosci-pogrzebowe-obroncow-Westerplatte-4-listopada-2022.html . Sucharski's dates follow Wikidata Q939926: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q939926 ; Dąbrowski's, Q1434917: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1434917 . 5. Boundaries: on Sucharski's state of mind and the question of command, the text only sets the accounts side by side. Sucharski himself admits the burning of documents and that an attack within an hour of the raid would have succeeded, but says nothing of his subordinates' role; Dąbrowski and Grodecki say he wanted to surrender; Kręgielski's "breakdown" and "foam at the mouth" are secondhand, and the strapping to a bed is a report of a report. Szkudliński, Drzycimski and Tuliszka regard the most extreme verdicts as unjustified; this story does not decide. The September 2 white flag rests only on postwar retellings and oral statements decades later and is not found in German records of the time; the text gives both, relying on Szkudliński's archival search for "not found," without asserting that there was none. The opening time: planned for 4:45; Gedanopedia gives the order at 4:47 and the first rounds a minute later; the Museum of the Second World War gives 4:48 to 4:55; Sucharski's message says 4:45. The text uses 4:47 for the order and quotes the message as written. The September 2 raid: Sucharski writes 17:30 to 18:15, Naval Group Command East 18:05, Aurich 18:00, Gedanopedia takeoff at 17:30 and arrival about 18:00; the text says "around six." Bombs on Guardhouse No. 5: two 50 kg in the Luftwaffe report, one 500 kg in Gedanopedia; Sucharski's note says only "bombs up to 500 kg"; the text follows the Luftwaffe report and names it. The September 7 flag: the 10:15 order (Museum of the Second World War), Aurich's 10:30, and the Navy Museum's statement that the Germans saw it at 9:30 are not reconciled. Numbers: about two hundred defenders (Szkudliński: not knowable exactly), about 210 in Gedanopedia; Polish dead fifteen on the Museum's list, up to twenty-one in various sources; first-day Polish dead three (Szkudliński) or four (Gedanopedia), so "three or four"; German dead are usually estimated at about fifty, wounded about 120 to 150; the text uses only Denker's figures for the assault company on the first day and names him. The twelve-hour task rests on the officers' postwar statements; a former commandant, Fabiszewski, questioned it; the text follows Dąbrowski and Grodecki (1946). Najsarek's death: killed on the spot (iPSB) or badly wounded and taken to a Danzig hospital (oral account of the German sailor Wolf); both are given. Sucharski's August 31 conversation with Lt. Col. Sobociński, the German discovery on September 8 of four Polish bodies, and the claim that deserters were executed are left out because no reliable primary basis was read for this story. Szkudliński suggests "We'll burn our fingers" may come from a conversation between von Bock and Halder; the text says only that the document records it. On the saber, the text follows the Museum ("allowed the commandant to go into captivity with his saber"); accounts differ on who handed it back. No invented dialogue, inner thoughts or sensory embellishment; quoted words come from the sources listed or their direct quotations, translated by the editor. 6. Key original wording: Sucharski's message "O godzinie 4.45 dnia 1 września pancernik „Schleswig Holstein" rozpoczął bombardowanie Westerplatte. Bombardowanie trwa. Sucharski – major."; pocket diary "Godz. 17.30 atak lotniczy do 18.15 (bomby do 500 kg i zapalające). Zniszczenie w. n. 5. Petzelt, 6 (Kita). Zniszczenie koszar. Spalanie dokumentów. Reorganizacja obsady. Odtworzenie łączności. W nocy odparcie wypadów."; report "Przyznaję, że gdyby do godziny po nalocie nastąpiło było natarcie n-pla, byłoby mu niewątpliwie przyniosło sukces."; Dąbrowski "Nie zgadzam się z komendantem. Wahania jego rozstrzyga na korzyść kontynuowania walki mój meldunek, że wartownie stoją."; Grodecki "Widziałem jego wahania i rozterki, jego zdenerwowanie." "Dzięki załodze. Chcieliśmy walczyć."; Kręgielski "jako pierwszy z całej załogi załamał się. Od tego momentu przestał istnieć jako dowódca." "co to będzie, co to będzie"; assault company report "Kompanie hat bei beiden Angriffen nicht einen einzigen Gegner gesichtet"; Army Group North "Wir verbrennen uns die Finger!"; Aurich "Na okręcie wszyscy najgłębiej przekonani, że to musi być końcem Westerplatte." "Westerplatte wywiesiło białą flagę" (Polish translation); Denker "obiad zjemy już na pokładzie »Schleswiga-Holsteina«" (Polish as quoted by Laskowski); the radio line "Westerplatte broni się jeszcze." 7. Rights: German wartime records and Polish official announcements are public documents; research articles, museum pages and memoirs are used for facts and brief quotation only; the narrative is original.